{"id":1339,"date":"2012-09-20T11:23:31","date_gmt":"2012-09-20T15:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/?p=1339"},"modified":"2012-09-20T11:23:32","modified_gmt":"2012-09-20T15:23:32","slug":"why-nigerian-email-scams-sorta-work-on-the-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/2012\/09\/20\/why-nigerian-email-scams-sorta-work-on-the-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Nigerian Email Scams (sorta) work (On the Media)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.onthemedia.org\/2012\/aug\/31\/why-nigerian-email-scams-work\/\">&#8220;Why don&#8217;t these spammers try a little harder to be less obvious&#8221; &#8211; On The Media may have an answer<\/a> Signal to noise ratio theory saves Nigerian spammers valuable time! &#8220;When Nigerian prince scam spam hits our inboxes, most of us know to politely decline requests for assistance. One might wonder why scammers don&#8217;t come up with something a bit more believable. But according to a new paper (pdf) by Cormac Hurley of Microsoft Research, the email&#8217;s overt scaminess helps identify the biggest suckers. Psychology professor Daniel Simons, who wrote about the phenomenon in the Wall Street Journal, explains.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>(<a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10000872396390443931404577548813973954518.html\">link to the article in WSJ if you&#8217;d rather read the gist of it than listen<\/a>)<\/p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/Metafilter?a=8jvEA94gpQA:GKRTI0Eobus:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/Metafilter?i=8jvEA94gpQA:GKRTI0Eobus:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p>via MetaFilter <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metafilter.com\/120096\/Why-Nigerian-Email-Scams-sorta-work-On-the-Media\">http:\/\/www.metafilter.com\/120096\/Why-Nigerian-Email-Scams-sorta-work-On-the-Media<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Why don&#8217;t these spammers try a little harder to be less obvious&#8221; &#8211; On The Media may have an answer Signal to noise ratio theory saves Nigerian spammers valuable time! &#8220;When Nigerian prince scam spam hits our inboxes, most of us know to politely decline requests for assistance. One might wonder why scammers don&#8217;t come &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/2012\/09\/20\/why-nigerian-email-scams-sorta-work-on-the-media\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Why Nigerian Email Scams (sorta) work (On the Media)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[6,79,621],"class_list":["post-1339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-reader","tag-ifttt","tag-metafilter","tag-randomkeystrike"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2skW4-lB","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}